ethnic groups through their colonial ascriptions as self-descriptions.6 As Kaur points out, the preferential treatment given to Sikhs in recruitment to the army or the police through their construction as ’the martial races’ and the unsuitability of Malays and Chinese to be suitable for the policing of Malaya led to the large scale recruitment of Sikhs in the police force from 1873 to 1947. The convergence of physiognomy, the construction of the martial race and recruitment in the Police Force resulted in the preferential recruitment of Punjabis or Sikhs in the police force as a height of 5.10 and 34 ¾ chest measurement was stipulated as the eligibility for being considered for recruitment. The return of Speedy and Walker, who had the experience of leading Sikhs during the 1857 Mutiny, to Punjab in search of pure Sikhs accounts for the large Sikh presence in Malaya until they faced competition from the Indian army in 1895. In fact, the isolation of the Khalsa over the multilayered and eclectic history of Sikhism in Sikh identarian narratives could be appropriated in colonialist constructions of the martial races. The deep conviction of the British about “the martial prowess of the Sikhs” flowing out of “their religious observances or beliefs”, as Harjot Oberoi has pointed out(1994 361), illustrates how pseudo-scientific theories of race could be superscribed on caste hierarchies and ritual formations, such as Khalsa Sikh conventions, to serve colonial economic imperatives.